Nelson Pressley: “Victory rituals have been part of football for decades. … But this season’s repertory ensembles are different from the soloists who have historically commanded the end zone, from Billy ‘White Shoes’ Johnson and his Funky Chicken to Ickey Woods … doing his light-footed soft shoe known as the ‘Ickey Shuffle.’ … Three Kansas City Chiefs performed a potato sack race. Five Detroit Lions formed a boisterous (if bulky) Rockettes-style kickline. Flocks of Philadelphia Eagles danced the Electric Slide.”
Blog
Welcome To The Era Of The Crowd (And What It’s Doing To Us)
Because tech companies like Facebook and Google make money off the sale of our personal data to advertisers, they depend on the attention of the masses to survive. And because their algorithms shape much of what we see online, it’s to their benefit to coerce us into thinking of ourselves not as individuals but as members of groups. “The big tech companies,” Franklin Foer writes, “Propel us to join the crowd—they provide us with the trending topics and their algorithms suggest that we read the same articles, tweets, and posts as the rest of the world.”
Cellist Pulls Out Of New Concerto Premiere With Three Days’ Notice, And L.A. Phil Comes Up With Daring Solution
“There are said to be only three [other] cellists on the planet who have played [Bernd Alois] Zimmermann’s incredibly demanding concerto, all in Europe. I’m not sure any other orchestra would have dared, or even could have dared, to go on. But management turned to three local musicians with exceptional new music chops – L.A. Phil associate cellist Ben Hong, Calder Quartet cellist Eric Byers and Lyris Quartet cellist Timothy Loo – to divide the solo part. They got their scores Wednesday morning. Rehearsals were Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.” And, writes Mark Swed, they were “utterly convincing.
How Technology Is Changing Our Basic Senses
“In a time when our environment is changing more rapidly than ever before—the inclusion of technology, potential for humans to travel to different planets, climate change—our senses are going to undergo a change to keep up with our environment’s transformation. It’s already happening, in fact.”
‘I Am Not A Prophet,’ Says Margaret Atwood
“Let’s get rid of that idea right now. Prophecies are really about now. In science fiction it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have.” (That said, she’s “sorry to have been so right.”)
Some Clear Trends About Movies That Grabbed Oscars’ Zeitgeist
“The Shape of Water,” a low-budget fantasy about a mute janitor who falls in love with an imprisoned sea creature, became 2017’s most decorated film on Tuesday, receiving 13 nominations from Oscar voters, one fewer than the record for the most in Academy Awards history.
Should I Take My Daughter To See Opera, Where Terrible Things Happen To Women?
Actually, yes. “Asked if she wanted to copy Gilda’s supremely self-sacrificing approach to romance, your correspondent’s daughter replied: ‘No, the opera made it quite clear that people who act like Gilda end up shanked and in a bag.'”
Listening To Classical Music Every Day Saved My Sanity, And It Can Save Yours
Freelance writer, BBC Radio 3 presenter, and mother of a toddler Clemency Burton-Hill: “It turned out that, when I converted my listening habits into a conscious daily ritual, I began to feel less anxious almost immediately. I curated myself monthly classical playlists with a specific piece for each day. Getting on the Tube and pressing play, instead of automatically being sucked into a social media scroll hole, seemed to be spiritually stabilising. I began to look disproportionately forward to it. And it occurred to me that, if I could benefit in such a meaningful way from this small but powerful act of soul maintenance, so might others.”
Long Wharf Theatre’s Artistic Director Accused Of Sexual Assault And Harassment
Four women have gone on the record describing persistent unwanted sexual contact by Gordon Edelstein. “Six other former employees, women and men, described frequent sexually explicit remarks in the workplace.” Several current and former Long Wharf employees say that other officers and board members had been alerted to Edelstein’s behavior.
Bayeux Tapestry Is Too Fragile To Loan To England, Say Curators Who Care For It
“[Former Bayeux Museum director] Isabelle Attard said moving such a ‘fragile, near-1,000-year-old roll of wool and linen’ even a few metres was risky, never mind transporting it overseas.” The curator directly responsible for the tapestry said that when he first heard news of the plan to loan the piece to Britain, he thought it was a hoax.